07/05 and 07/06, a group of 12 climbed Mt Baker on Easton Glacier successfully. Here is a more or less detailed account of the climb.

Approach

6:45AM, Met at Sedro Wooley Ranger Station, registered, took off to Railroad Grade trailhead at about 3300 ft
8:45AM, took off from the TH. Weather was humid and chilly. 40% PoP in the forecast and clearing up at night. The trail starts flat for about a mile in the woods, mostly snow covered from the start. Then we came to a place where the trail crosses a creek. It took us a little while to find a nice spot to cross it. It took us another 15 minutes to find the trail on the other side of the creek. Soon enough, we lost the trail again, thanks to the snow. We decided to give up and make our way up. We did some step kicking on a steep snow slope through the woods onto an open area. It has become foggy and the visibility was poor. After walking on the open area for a while, we finally spotted Railroad Grade Trail. It’s on a sharp ridge. It’s very conspicuous, at least this time of the year, because the top of the ridge is barren even if the rest of the mountain is still under heavy snow. We picked up the trail from here and camped at 6500 ft at around 2PM. The rest of the afternoon was foggy, breezy and rainy.

Summit push

The weather forecast predicted a turnaround at night. I kept checking while resting in the tent. It was rainy and windy all the time. I was checking my barometer every half hour, 803 mbar every time, I was disappointed. I was already about to accept that we’ll bail out. “I’ll at least get a good night of sleep”, I said to myself. The rain and the wind stopped sometime after midnight. I got out of the tent and checked the outside at 2AM. It was too foggy, I couldn’t even see tents 20 feet away. We decided to check again in an hour or so. 3:30, the leader woke up everyone and decided the climb is on. It was still foggy, but much better now. We were able to see a planet in the sky although not the stars. We roped up and took off at 4:30. This is an awfully late start. We began to see small crevasses and bergshrunds soon after we left camp. We were keeping a very nice pace at 900 feet per hour. It was a little boring walking in the fog. But the sun is trying to break off the clouds and we are ascending above them.

We took a short break for snack and water before 7. We were above the clouds now. We could see Sherman peak by the crater. We also saw the tip of Glacier peak sticking out of the clouds. It wasn’t clear enough to see Rainier though. Roy realized that he is out of water since he was drinking too much out of his camelpak. This is another thing I don’t like about camelpak. You can’t keep track of your drinking. This is a bad situation. We have barely started and the heat hasn’t begun yet. I carried 3 litres when I started. I knew I wouldn’t need that much, I can also melt snow in the Nalgene bottle as soon as the sun is out. So I offered him 2 litres. I can see the panic going away from his face.

There is a crevass in our way at about 8500 feet, long enough that there is no obvious way to get around. But there is a spot where it’s narrow and shallow so that we can just crawl over. We encountered crevasses more frequently above 8500, but they are all pretty straightforward to get around. It’s so pretty to glare into those seemingly bottomless crevasses. They are beautiful, deadly beautiful. There was a guy in the team who was obviously not in a perfect conditioning and the leader decided to send him down with a rope lead. We reassigned rope and continued on. We now had 5 people on each 40-metre rope.

We maintained our good and moderate pace, without long breaks. We arrived at the base of Sherman peak by the crater and found a place out of the wind at 8:30. After a short chocolate break, we ascended to the crater rim to look into the steaming monster. This is the third time I had looked at a volcano crater. This time is the closest range.

The last 1000 feet begin with a 30-35 degree slope. I can definitely tell the lack of oxygen at this altitude. Active breathing helped a lot. After ascending about 700 feet, the last part is a long and flat walk. The summit is a huge and flat snow dome. It’s so flat that it’s really hard to tell which point is the summit :). We took pictures, congratulated each other and had lunch.

Descent

After summitting at 10:00, we spent 15 minutes on the top and quickly descended. It was already warm and the snow was soft. There was a section of very open slope and no crevasses. We did a syncrhonized roped glissade :). The slope was barely enough to pick up speed though. That was fun. The rest of it was uneventful except that we were lost again around our camp. It was very foggy (we descended back into the clouds). We knew we were very close to the camp but just couldn’t see it. We should have marked a way point with the GPS or wanded our camp. The pack out part is uninteresting, as usual. I got quite tired back at the trailhead at 6:00PM, more tired than I expected. I hadn’t recovered very well from a Thursday run and didn’t get good sleep Friday night.

Summary

It was a perfect climb. The leader is very experienced and decisive. He was well aware of the situation of the whole team all the time. He was also very sensitive to the pace. Pace control was very successful. It was a key to this trip considering our late start.

• the good: 和上次一样，还是沿途热情的居民。下午的时候接近100度高温，大太阳，都要烤化了。路边有人把院子里的水管拉出来给大家浇水，一下就凉快下来了。一路经常有观众给助威。
• the bad: 自然是203迈的地方爆胎。我怀疑我是离终点线最近的爆胎的了
• the excitement: 照例还是最后30迈，知道自己没问题了，天气也凉下来了，喝足了水吃足了东西就开始冲刺了，这段比去年快了15分钟，只用了1:30
• the joy: 冲到终点线的那一刻还是很激动人心的。这是我的第一个double century。而且是home coming回到oregon。Portland是我熟悉的城市，我对Oregon有很强烈的emotional attachment。 
• the challenge: 120迈到170迈之间小腿几度要抽筋，主要是脱水太厉害了，无机盐补充不够早。150-175之间死撑的很厉害，一口一口的计算着喝水，每过一个milepost都要在脑子里做math，每个小坡都觉得那么陡，身边的人刷刷的超过去，让我很绝望。

Pain is temporary, bragging right is forever!

And here are some stats:

I started at 5:10am and arrived at the finishline at 6:15pm. I got a flat tire right before Broadway Bridge, which is about 2 mile from the finish line (do I get worst luck award?) and that cost me 20-30 minutes. My bike computer logged 205 miles and average speed was 17.6MPH, pedaling time 11:35. I was not fast, but I didn’t stop much and I tried to keep the stops short. I’m an endurance type rather than sprinting type. My cruising speed on flat was mostly around 20-22mph. Tried to follow some 24-25 pace lines and gave up.

Here are all the stops I took:

Seward park (mile 11) for the restroom. Few minutes
Spannaway (mile 55) for breakfast. 20 minutes
Centralia (mile 102) for lunch. 30 minutes
Winlock (mile 121) for water. 2 minutes
Castle Rock (mile 137) for water and restroom. Few minutes
St Helens (mile 175) for snack and restroom. 15 minutes

If you are like me who rides slowly but can go a long way, here are my suggestions to keep the stops short:

• If you only need water and restroom, do not stop at big stops. They are more crowded.
• When you stop at food stops, schedule your activities this way: drink, fill water bottle, grab food, go to the restroom and wait in the line while you are eating and stretching, get on the bike and take off.
• Start early to avoid the crowd.